History
The seven families were first named in a document (from the year 1306) in which John II, Duke of Brabant restores and asserts the existing privileges of the seven families after the citizens of Brussels had violently demanded participation in the city's government. The families named in the document are
- Sleeus
- Sweerts
- Serhuyghs
- Steenweeghs
- Coudenbergh
- Serroelofs
- Roodenbeke
All the members of the city council were exclusively recruited and elected from among those families who could prove patrilinear or matrilinear descent from the original seven families. Although tradesmen formed guilds to counter this oligarchical system and in 1421 after violent confrontations gained some rights to participate in the city's government, the rule of the seven houses remained predominant until the end of the Ancien Régime, when these special privileges were abolished. This meant the end of the oligarchical system of the seven nobles houses of Brussels. In French, the Seven nobles houses of Brussels are called 7 lignages de Bruxelles, in Dutch 7 geslachten van Brussel.
Read more about this topic: Seven Noble Houses Of Brussels
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)